Thursday, August 03, 2006

Day 14: The Win-Loss Report

4After two full days of Mixed Teams competition, the six preliminary rounds have come to a close. Rounds 1,2,5, and 6 were completed on the general tournament topic of "The world's freshwater resources should be considered common property." Rounds 3 and 4 used limited preparation time topics in which teams and their coaches were given exactly 30 minutes to prepare their case and arguments. The topics discussed were: "the world's energy resources should be considered common property" and "the internet should be considered a global commons."

Since teams were given a rather difficult pace of research and preparation for the tournament, writing and defending a solid case was a challenging task. Interestingly, the rapid learning curve for affirmatives is clearly visible between successive general topic and limited preparation topic rounds.

More than anything else, the Mixed Teams Tournament is meant to be a learning experience for the participants, both as members of a team, and debaters in and of themselves. Simply by judging these past 6 rounds I have seen a noticeable improvement in everyone's performance and confidence and I hope the debaters have noticed it too!